The purpose of this paper was to examine social workers' experiences of integration of unaccompanied children. We aimed to study which factors in the individual and the community social workers experience affect the integration and how they, based on their understanding, work to promote integration. The essay has a phenomenological approach and focuses on the social workers' own experiences of the phenomenon. The empirical data was obtained from qualitative interviews conducted with five social workers, all administrators in cases involving unaccompanied children. The result shows that the social workers feel that the desire to integrate is the most important presumption that must be present in the unaccompanied children. An important hindrance to the integration that the social workers illustrate is their experiences of trauma which have to be dealt with before they can successfully complete the process of integration. The social workers indicate school, the sheltered accommodation, social services and voluntary organizations as the operators that are most important for the integration. All interviewees also believe that what society looks like and what values that are prevailing are affecting the unaccompanied childrens' integration. The social workers report that they are working to strengthen and motivate the unaccompanied children to become a part of society but not all are receptive to it.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-31405 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Engell, Wictoria, Jansson, Angelica |
| Publisher | Karlstads universitet, Fakulteten för humaniora och samhällsvetenskap (from 2013), Karlstads universitet, Fakulteten för humaniora och samhällsvetenskap (from 2013) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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